The author is a Forbes contributor. The opinions expressed are those of the writer.

Loading ...

Loading ...

This story appears in the {{article.article.magazine.pretty_date}} issue of {{article.article.magazine.pubName}}. Subscribe

Hollywood's Biggest Turkeys Of 2016: The Films That Flopped

Warner Bros.

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice has earned $15.05 million on its first Monday. That brings the film’s four-day domestic total to $181.057m. That’s the 30th biggest Monday ever, the 20th-biggest “day four” Monday, and the 12th biggest non-holiday Monday of all time. As we go through this, the two factors are the size of the gross and the extent to which the film dropped from Sunday to Monday. Both are actually pretty encouraging.

Said Monday gross is way above the $12.585 million that Man of Steel earned on its first Monday. And that’s down a genuinely solid 55% from its $33.7m Sunday gross. For comparison’s sake, Furious 7 earned $14m (-57%) on its first Monday following a $147m Easter weekend, while The Hunger Games earned $10.6m (-69%) following its $152m debut weekend on this same frame four years ago.

It’s not an entirely fair comparison, but Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 came off a record-breaking (but record front-loaded) $169 million debut weekend with an $18m Monday. That was a 49% drop from Sunday’s $35m gross, but it was also in the middle of the summer. For reference, The Dark Knight dropped 43% on its first Monday while The Dark Knight Rises dropped 51%. So this decline is higher, but it’s closer than I would have expected.

Maybe it was just a matter of kids/families knowing that they would have a day off of school to see the film yesterday and thus not needing to see the movie on Sunday. Yes, there are a bunch of kids off school this week for Spring Break, but we should not necessarily treat this as the same as an “everyone is off of school” summer week. And the fact that this one came close regarding percentage is the first encouraging domestic box office news I’ve seen since Friday.

The Avengers dropped 66% on its first Monday ($18.8m) while Avengers: Age of Ultron fell 73% ($13.2m), and neither of those early May Mondays was during anything resembling a school vacation. Regarding live-action mega-hits that opened in March (obviously there are not a whole bunch of them), Alice in Wonderland dropped 71% on its first Monday ($9 million) while Oz: The Great and Powerful earned $6.322m (-71%) on its first Monday. 300 dropped a shockingly low 57% ($7.6m) back in 2007 while Watchmen fell 68% ($12.3m to $3.885m) during what turned out to be a brutally abbreviated run. That this dropped even less is unquestionably encouraging.

As you can see, the industry as a whole has become more frontloaded even to the tune of those Monday drops. The good news is that the Ben Affleck/Henry Cavill superhero sequel has already out-grossed the likes of Captain America: The First Avenger ($176 million) Men in Black 3 ($179m), X-Men Origins: Wolverine ($179.8m), Ant-Man ($181m), and Thor ($181.03m) . By today, it will presumably have out-grossed Batman Forever ($184m), Men in Black 2 ($190m), and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ($191m). It will presumably cross $200m domestic (and the likes Superman Returns, Amazing Spider-Man 2, and Batman Begins) on its sixth day and close out its first week with around $220m domestic. And then we get to that all-important second weekend, but for today the news is good.